SANTA ANA : City to Cut Retirement Age, Starting Salaries
Under an agreement with the employees union, the city has decided to cut the starting salary for new workers by 5% and to lower the retirement age from 60 to 55, officials said Tuesday.
The agreement with the Santa Ana City Employees Assn., finalized during a closed session after Monday’s City Council meeting, capped six months of negotiations.
Kermit Francis, the city’s executive director of personnel, said lowering the retirement age should result in enough early retirements over the next three to four years to save the city as much as $400,000 in salaries for each of those years.
Francis said the lower starting salary will apply to about 500, or one-third, of the city’s positions. The cut will not apply to current employees, police officers, firefighters or management-level employees.
Francis said a routine survey of other Orange County cities revealed that wages in Santa Ana are “a little high in the marketplace.” The positions affected range from maintenance workers to engineers.
Francis said that none of the 500 positions are frozen and that no more than a dozen are vacant at any one time.
Given the high demand for jobs, Francis said, he does not expect the salary cuts to discourage high-quality applicants--”not in this market.”
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